Children Should Be Allowed To Vote

Every nation deserves the leaders it has.
The question is how people ensure that they'll have leaders who will be there to serve and not to be served. Corruption, for instance in Kenya, might not be eradicated (if that’s actually possible) in our lifetime. Not even the famed 'corruption-slayer' Kagame can make a dent, was he to vie for his third term in Kenya.

We simply worship money too much! We gladly invite erstwhile ordinary people, now flaunting questionable nauseating opulence to Harambees and other forms of charity without batting an eye. We glorify corruption and subsequently reward it with leadership. A mwananchi like you and I can hardly raise Ksh.10-20 million for a formidable campaign for a National Assembly seat against an incumbent who has been pilfering funds for the same. That’s why the M.P will remain in office for the foreseeable future, and the successor also fuata nyayo.Until people wake up (read our children), this might be the story for a long time to come.

But not to worry, even most working democracies once had this problem so it's just a matter of time before the tide shifts.

Till then, perhaps a constituency should be created to allow for the voice of the child to be heard. We’re too busy selling their future through wanton acquisition of national debts for them to re-pay- What one politician aptly refers to as ‘dipping our hands in their piggy-bank.’ What if they had a voice and decide if they want to be in that future we're purporting to create for them. They elect their own prefects and head boy/girl nowadays, so why not?

 It is apparent to today's parent that you can no longer bring up today’s children the way you were raised. They are way too sophisticated and techy. They probably know what you just discovered the other day already! If you can't cane them the way you were caned, or be an authoritarian like your parent was, you should know better than to force issues down their throats. Rebellion to follow will be incomprehensible. They might, on the flip-side, change us in the process as we realise that we're holding these resources just for a while, for their custody.


Once the children learn early enough about what's right and just, and realise their power to make a change, issue-based politics will ensue and not personality cults as is the case today. Tribalism will be banished to extinction as laws are drafted that will ensure ethnic composition or money alone do not tilt the scales to anyone's advantage.
We'll have leaders who know why they were elected and use their positions to serve the interests of our great-grandchildren.

Allow the children to vote!